


Bear With Me Till Midnight

by MorteLise



Category: RWBY
Genre: Awkwardness, Couch Cuddles, Fluff, Friends With Benefits, Love Confessions, M/M, Miscommunication, New Year's Eve, Qrow swears a lot, Sarcasm, Sickfic, some drama in the middle there but mostly a lot of sass, they forgot to tell each other they're dating, they're both emotionally repressed idiots with a lot of baggage
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-25
Updated: 2017-10-25
Packaged: 2019-01-22 19:51:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,351
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12489544
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MorteLise/pseuds/MorteLise
Summary: Getting stuck home sick on New Year's Eve isn't exactly Qrow's idea of a good time. Ozpin attempts to make things better, but initially just makes them weird.(Or, the one where Qrow doesn't know how to take care of himself and Ozpin is terrible at confessions.)





	Bear With Me Till Midnight

**Author's Note:**

> This really wanted to take place on New Year's Eve, and I really wanted to post it. So I hope you will forgive me for being unfashionably out of season.

Taiyang showed up on Qrow’s doorstep with a bottle of non-drowsy cold medicine instead of Yang and Ruby not long before they were supposed to head down to the New Year’s festival in central Vale.

“Well, fuck you too,” Qrow rasped, glaring at him blearily.

Tai shot back the most criminally paternal expression Qrow had seen since—well.

It was a little hard to be mad when this was one of many signs that Tai was finally getting out of his life-destroying mourning phase. He functioned, did dad things, paid bills—Qrow even felt almost comfortable going on missions again without begging Ozpin to keep an eye on the Rose-Xiao Long household while he was away.

(Begging was the wrong word, probably. Qrow didn’t beg and Oz didn’t need begging to, at least not with that kind of thing. But that didn’t stop Qrow from holding his breath until he saw the house was still standing and Yang hadn’t run off again.)

It was also hard to be mad over his headache, which was definitely only a headache and completely manageable if ignored long enough. Along with his sore throat, constant coughing, bouts of nausea, and the occasional chills that could only mean he needed to bitch to his landlord about messing with his thermostat.

“You had to know I wasn’t going to let you go like this,” Tai said, like it was a given fact that Qrow wouldn’t be strong enough to shake off some measly cold. “I mean at this point I’m thinking about stuffing you into a sack and dragging you to a doctor.”

“Try it,” Qrow hissed, but the threat lost its edge with the coughing fit that directly followed. Something unpleasant dislodged from his lungs and made its way up his throat. He swallowed it.

From the disgusted look on his face, Taiyang noticed. “If you’re still like this when we stop by tomorrow, I will.”

Qrow rolled his eyes and tried to force himself past the idiotic mother hen blocking his way. But because it was Tai, rather than stand aside like a decent person or just refuse to budge like someone who wasn’t a complete asshole, he side-stepped and threw Qrow over his shoulder while he was off balance before carrying him back into the apartment and dumping him on the couch.

“Y’know I wouldn’t even be back in Vale if I hadn’t promised the girls I’d go to this thing,” Qrow grumbled into the couch cushions. “Went out of my way for this, I should still be doing something daring and mysterious out in the wild, but they wanted me to come along so here I am. Way to disappoint them.”

“Thanks for the mental image of you dying of consumption out in the middle of nowhere like a pioneer drama love interest,” Tai said wryly, ignoring Qrow’s muffled “Do you seriously watch those?” as he pulled a tv series boxset seemingly out of nowhere and slapped it down on the coffee table. “Yang and Ruby understood just fine, they said they hoped you felt better soon. They even asked me to leave you Advent Garden so you could catch up while you had the time.”

Qrow managed to lift his head up enough to squint at it (in his defense, his couch was really damn comfortable), but all he managed to make out were a bunch of brightly colored blurs. “Did I see this one yet?”

Taiyang hummed thoughtfully. “Don’t think so, they were still pretty obsessed with Rainbow Brigade when you left. You might’ve seen the original though, this is just the—remake? Reboot? Whatever you call it. But at least in Vale, Advent Garden was pretty popular when we were ki—” He stopped and cleared his throat self-consciously. “Which probably means you’ve never seen it. So have fun with that.”

“Is it any good?” Qrow asked, finally wriggling his way back into motion as he struggled to escape the confines of his comfy couch.

Tai shot the boxset a haunted look. “I have learned to love it because I have to,” he said.

Ah, parenthood.

“Guess I’ll find out after the festival,” said Qrow, shoving himself up to a sit, only to be met with a disapproving Taiyang. “C’mon, Tai. I’ve made it through worse.”

Taiyang crossed his arms and sighed, still incredibly disgustingly fatherly. “Alright, let’s say you have. But maybe it’s not about you. What’re the odds you get the girls sick, too?”

Damn. That was a good point.

He actually had no argument for that one.

Qrow flopped back down on the couch. “Fine, go hog all the family member brownie points for yourself. At least pop a disc in while you show yourself out, might as well find out what the fuss is about.”

Taiyang’s smile was relieved and more than a little bit smug. “Will do,” he said, then slammed a massive jug of orange juice down on the table that could not have conceivably fit anywhere on his person comfortably or possibly even uncomfortably. “Do me a favor and actually drink this one? I don’t think you know what vitamins are.”

“Where the fuck were you hiding that?”

“Family secret,” Tai said cheerfully, and put on the first disc for him before heading out. “Have fun dying.”

“I will,” Qrow tried to say maliciously, but it just ended in another coughing fit.

-

With one conversation, this had turned into the shittiest New Year’s Eve.

Qrow figured he’d turn the cable back on once it got closer to the actual festival—maybe he’d catch a glimpse of Tai or Yang or Ruby. But for the time being he just left the show running. And it wasn’t like he got nothing done—he managed to stuff Taiyang’s latest orange juice of mockery into the fridge and slam down at least half of the bottle of cold medicine, figuring if it did its job he could at least swing by in bird form for a bit.

It was not his most brilliant move.

Pharmaceutical drugs were apparently full of terrible physical and mental consequences for the uninitiated in ways that made alcohol look tame. Some of the symptoms went away, to be replaced by new, horrible ones—the headache exchanged for this weird, goopy mental sensation that matched the consistency of the syrupy medicine itself somehow; the fatigue not so much replaced as melded with a jittery restlessness that he guessed was supposed to be the “non-drowsy” part of the equation; and the coughing had stopped in favor of a dissociative tingling throughout his body that hadn’t, to his knowledge, affected his temperature in any way.

Drugs were terrible. Taiyang was terrible. When he was a kid Raven would just tell him to suck it up until he got better or died. What happened to the simple solutions?

Qrow had been staring at his apartment window for an unfathomable amount of time, sorely tempted to take a trip out of it to get rid of his restless energy and only factoring in shifting into bird form half the time he thought about it, when there was another knock at the door.

It took him a second to register the knocking, and a second longer to realize that it wasn’t coming from the television, and then even longer to actually drag himself over to the door with the vague intention of telling off whoever felt like bothering him. If he remembered he meant to do that by the time he got to the door.

He opened the door and his annoyance was of course immediately derailed by the confusing sight of a forest green peacoat and a bag of takeout food, paired with an emerald green scarf and grey hair, all of which felt like it should add up to something important but instead what came out of Qrow’s mouth was, “I don’t remember ordering a coat rack.”

The takeout-bearer, who was tall but not a coat rack, shifted his weight a little and sighed.

“Hello, Qrow,” said a smooth, soothing voice Qrow recognized instantly but didn’t know how to reconcile with his current context.

He blinked and tried to make his eyes focus properly.

Oh hey, it was Ozpin.

Why was it Ozpin.

“I’m still mad at you,” he said, because that was the last thing his brain could connect with Ozpin, who definitely did not fit into this scenario at all. Also Qrow was leaning against the doorframe now, and he had no idea when that had happened. “Turns out I could’ve been out again today if it weren’t for your shitty test.”

The only emotive part of Oz’s face Qrow could actually see were the top half of his warm brown eyes thanks to the glasses perched on his nose and the scarf wrapped around his mouth, but somehow even that little managed to convey an endless well of patience. “I gave it to ascertain whether you were fit to go back out into the field as you so insisted. And you failed.”

Qrow opened his eyes to glare at him, not sure when they’d closed. “Because you made it so damn tricky.”

“I asked you to fly through my open window.”

“And I did!”

“You flew into a closed window. On the opposite end of the room.”

Qrow opened his mouth and felt the words stick and his few remaining brain cells flicker and die. He pressed his face into the arm he had braced against the doorframe. “I don’t. What are you doing here, Oz.”

“Waiting to be invited in, mostly.” There was a weird undercurrent of strain in his voice.

“So now you’re a vampire on top of everything else?” And great, Qrow’s headache was back.

Why was—okay, it wasn’t like Qrow thought Oz wouldn’t know where he lived, he was Oz, but Oz belonged at Beacon, not in his apartment hallway, he—

Wait.

“Shouldn’t you be at the festival with everyone else?” Shit, was he sliding? “They have that part with the...Beacon thing…”

Qrow’s third arm stopped him from falling, only he didn’t have a third arm. Oh, it was Oz’s. And the rest of him was there too. And the paper takeout bag was very loud and the stuff inside it was probably crushed, but Oz was warm and smelled like hot chocolate and winter and firewood so overall that was a win.

“I took a sick day,” Ozpin said, because ha ha, he was so fucking witty. Another sigh ghosted through Qrow’s hair. “May I come in?” he asked quietly. “I understand if the answer is no.”

The sad straggling bit of Qrow that was still lucid and therefore spiteful was kinda tempted to say ‘no’ just to see whether it meant Oz would literally walk away and leave him a heap in the hallway, but even the lucid bit knew deep down that was a terrible idea.

If Tai found him like that, he’d never hear the end of it.

He nodded, and time did a funny little skip thing that had equal chance of being Oz’s Semblance and Qrow’s currently godawful grasp of time, and suddenly he was back on the couch.

And Oz was in his apartment.

What the fuck.

It wasn’t like Qrow had ever been great about drawing a line between his personal life and all the Inner Circle stuff—it wasn’t exactly easy, which was why the closest thing Glynda had to a love life was that awkward masochism tango she had going on with General Stick-Up-His-Ass who was an actual continent away most of the time, Raven had fucked right off back to their tribe first chance she’d gotten once she realized how deep the rabbit hole went, and they hadn’t even bothered trying to bring someone as aggressively dedicated to the domestic life as Taiyang into it in the first place. Summer was the only one who’d found a way to balance it properly.

And look at all the good it’d done her.

Still, there was a difference between screwing over your chances at normal life and family for their super secret society (and Qrow hadn’t even managed to do that right) and just plain screwing your wise, all-knowing, ambiguously-immortal boss on the side, because when Qrow Branwen made bad decisions, he damn well made the worst ones possible.

It wasn’t—well he hadn’t been kidding, not really, even though he told himself he was in the beginning, but when he’d hit on an ages-old, body-hopping amalgam of loads of probably really messed up dead people and one equally messed up live one all wrapped up in one hot green-obsessed package, he hadn’t expected the guy to actually say yes. But bodies had needs, even if they were jam-packed full of what might’ve been thousands of souls or maybe just one assimilating its successors like some nightmarish hivemind, so somehow Ozpin had actually gone along with it.

Which was fine, sex didn’t require thinking and that was high on the many reasons Qrow liked it. It was—an arrangement, he guessed, a very mutually beneficial one that was dependent enough on physicality that Qrow didn’t have to do any digging into why, exactly, after a lifetime of trust issues, one night stands, and an allergy to commitment he’d hopped right onto the loyalty train and back into Ozpin’s bed mission after mission.

Well. Loyalty was what he called it, anyway, and it was the name he was sticking to. Raven had had all sorts of names for it—curiosity, attraction, phase, obsession, worship—names that had gotten more and more vitriolic the more she realized Qrow had no intention of following her back to Anima. Because that was the way his loving sister worked.

But the rules he and Ozpin had never actually laid out in their arrangement meant that Oz and the Maidens and all the weird Inner Circle shit stayed at Beacon and out in the field where they belonged, and Tai and Yang and Ruby got Patch and Signal and Qrow’s apartment. If there were a physical line drawn, it’d look like a shitty, rambling, jagged one Qrow probably drew himself while wasted, especially since between Ruby’s eyes and Yang’s fixation with her mom he just kept waiting for the other shoe to drop, but the line was still there, damn it.

And now Ozpin had just gone and crossed it.

“You have six unopened bottles of orange juice in your fridge,” Ozpin said, like he in his infinite wisdom hadn’t realized he’d just fucked over Qrow’s entire worldview. “And nothing else.”

“Because I’m never here and Tai’s an asshole,” Qrow said, having given up on getting any sort of explanation for this alternate reality level weirdness.

Maybe the cold medicine was making him hallucinate.

Not helping things was the way Ozpin had stripped out of his already atypical scarf and peacoat (folded neatly on a nearby chair because Qrow did not, in fact, have a coat rack) to reveal a festively obnoxious bright green sweater covered in neatly stitched snowflakes. He was at the kitchen counter now, carefully removing containers from the crumpled paper bag and setting them aside.

“Is that the new Advent Garden?” Oz asked, and seriously, this must’ve all been some sort of fever dream Qrow was having passed out somewhere. Hopefully in his bed but probably not.

“Mm,” Qrow grunted, mouth sealed against the cavalcade of questions piling up in his head.

“It doesn’t quite capture the spirit of the original. Although I suppose the animation quality is better.”

Now would be a great time to wake up.

“Why do you know that?” Qrow asked, which wasn’t any of the questions he wanted to ask, but at least he’d finally used the word ‘why’ in a sentence.

Oz gave his patented dignified headmaster chuckle. “Elektra was fond of it when she first began her Autumn Maiden training,” he said, and some quick-if-dodgy mental math told Qrow that must’ve been his previous iteration. Timeline could get a little tricky with Ozpin sometimes.

There was a brief pause where the sound of rummaging continued before Ozpin added, more hesitantly, “And I used to watch it with my sister. Before.”

Huh.

Qrow might’ve been fucked up six ways to Sunday, but not enough that his heart didn’t skip a beat at that.

That was—rare.

It couldn’t have been a slip, so it must’ve been an offering of some sort—another step across the line, a flash of vulnerability to go with Oz’s sudden intrusion into Qrow’s own personal space. He just didn’t know what he was supposed to do with it.

His first instinct was to hoard it like the corvid he was, to stow it away with the small pile of moments he’d collected of Oz’s other flickers of genuine humanity throughout the years. But this hadn’t been startled or tempted or annoyed out of Oz like the rest, it had been handed to him.

And Qrow was in no condition to think about what that meant.

He struggled up on the couch again with a question on his lips that he instantly forgot, because suddenly Oz was right there in front of him, still dissonant with his stacks of takeout and his terrible sweater, and Qrow’s fight-or-flight instincts slammed into overdrive.

He was vulnerable and there was someone in his space and the space was enclosed and his weapon was out of reach and his tribe wasn’t there and he had to stop panicking, panic would bring the Grimm and—

By the time Qrow got a hold of himself again (and the room stopped spinning from his idiotic decision to move so fast), he was pressed against the far end of the couch, the takeout was on the table, and Oz was back in the kitchen, looking tired.

“I’m sorry, this was a mistake,” Ozpin said, gathering up his things. “If you want, I can leave.”

Qrow’s initial instinct was to respond with an emphatic ‘yes,’ considering this was a whole lot of weird uncharted territory he’d have trouble dealing with in a good state of mind, but Qrow had always been a contrary dumbass anyway.

“Why are you even here, Oz?” he asked instead, and Ozpin paused with a humorless, self-deprecating laugh.

It was the closest he’d ever seen Oz to flustered—he put his stuff back on the chair, pressed a hand to his mouth, glanced at Qrow, glanced back at the chair, pinched the bridge of his nose, and finally sighed in defeat, looking back at Qrow properly.

“Would you believe I thought it might be romantic?” he said wryly.

There was a breath where they stared at each other like morons, and then something exploded and Qrow fell off the couch before he realized it had come from the television.

This New Year’s Eve was cursed.

Qrow clambered his way back onto the couch as Ozpin hovered at a non-threatening distance looking concerned but ultimately useless.

“I hate this fucking show,” Qrow muttered, slumping back into a sit with a distressing lack of sensation in his limbs. He hadn’t actually paid enough attention to have any feelings about the show at all, especially considering he had a couple of nieces to rib about it in the near future, but he was hoping it’d be enough to switch back to the somehow less bizarre topic of some cheesy superhero cartoon Oz used to watch before he’d ascended into godhood or something.

So of course Ozpin said nothing at all.

One of them was fucking this up, or both of them were, and Qrow was going to blame the cold medicine for the way he wasn’t actively trying to put an end to whatever ‘this’ was.

(He knew what it was. But that sentence with the ‘r’ word had already been erased from what he was willing to admit he remembered of the conversation.)

If he fucked this up too badly Oz would leave, and Oz shouldn’t have been there in the first place but he was and Qrow—didn’t want him to leave.

He shuffled as far to one side of the couch as he could and grabbed one of the takeout containers. “Look, just—c’mere and help me finish these, alright? And make this cartoon make sense.”

He probably should’ve been more worried about Ozpin catching what he had, but between his constant dissociating and Oz’s sudden bouts of awkwardness enough time had passed that his Semblance would’ve taken hold so Ozpin was probably just doomed anyway, magic be damned.

Which must have been a conclusion Ozpin had also come to, because a solid, comforting weight settled in next to Qrow as Oz picked up his own container.

So there they were. Sitting on Qrow’s couch fully clothed with lukewarm takeout while Qrow was high off his ass on cough syrup and maybe fighting ebola.

Great.

“It’s a very comfortable couch,” Oz said finally.

Qrow hummed in agreement, suddenly realizing he must’ve flaked out again since he was now leaning back with his eyes closed and the container loosely gripped in his lap. “Got it at a great discount, too.”

God, was this really what normal people talked about?

He took a bracing breath and snapped back into action, straightening up and popping the lid off the takeout to reveal the unsurprising sight of soup. “Really?”

Oz handed him a spoon, because somehow he hadn’t thought that far ahead. “Soup is a medicinal staple for a reason. Easy consumption is a factor, of course, but the nutritional value of a well-made broth alone has all sorts of benefits,” he said, slipping into that tongue-in-cheek, overly grandiose, vaguely-Peter-Port tone of voice that was just begging to get called out. “Combine that with the right mixture of immunity boosting herbs, vegetables, and protein, and it’s possible to—”

“You’re so full of it,” Qrow said with a sad effort at a smirk, and even if the bait had been obvious Oz still broke into a smile.

A real, relieved, honest-to-God smile, not the indulgent one or the civil one or the wise-beyond-ages one, but the one that made Qrow’s stomach flip even on days he didn’t have a virus as an excuse.

“Well,” Oz amended, and the smile had bled into his voice, “at least that’s what I was told by the restaurant owner. But their restaurant and their recipe really have been in the family for generations, so hopefully it’s at least as good as memory serves.”

Qrow was struck by the sudden but unsurprising urge to kiss him, but the burning in his throat and the uniquely terrible taste of sick phlegm reminded him of what a bad idea that’d be, so instead he just tried the soup.

It was good—thick, spicy, and well-insulated enough that it was still pretty warm. Qrow shoveled another spoonful in his mouth and wondered if he’d eaten yet that day.

Maybe not.

Eating was also a great excuse not to continue any of the trains of thought that had been touched on in the last few minutes.

Meanwhile on Advent Garden, the show either hit the mid-season finale or got really desperate for ratings, because one of the team members went crazy and betrayed the others using the most violent methods allowed on animated family television.

It probably wasn’t a great point to pick up the show, but at least it was fun to watch.

“That was a dick move,” Qrow mumbled around another mouthful of soup as said crazy green-clad traitor seized the obligatory red-themed leader by the throat and slammed her into the floor.

“She’s not at fault here,” Ozpin said, surprisingly defensive.

Qrow nudged him in the shoulder. “You would defend the green one.”

“I admit, Mira was my favorite,” Ozpin agreed, setting aside the container and taking a sip from one of the plastic cups he’d set on the table. Although where he’d gotten the cups was a mystery, since Qrow didn’t own any unless it was on the list of things Tai had randomly broken into his apartment to make sure he owned. “She was certainly the most dynamic character. Whereas the others all wanted to become heroes, her recruitment to the team was circumstantial and born of necessity. Her difficulty trusting the team after a lifetime of survival and self-interest often lead to early misunderstandings and conflicts such as this one, but ultimately that made her ability to overcome her cutthroat background and truly form a bond with the team all the more rewarding. She was all the more heroic for it, I think.”

Oh come on, that wasn’t even subtle.

“Nah, the red one’s better,” Qrow said, because two could play at that game.

“Ayame.”

“The red one,” he repeated with a smirk. “Sure, you can vote green for most improved, but red’s the one calling the shots, the one everybody blames when the team fails or green acts up with all her so-called issues. The one who’s gotta plaster on a smile and pretend like everything’s alright so everyone can keep moving forward. And I’ll betcha she never once breaks.”

Qrow could swear there was a touch of red in Oz’s cheeks as he ducked his head and took another sip from his cup.

“I suppose that depends on how faithful this series is to the original,” Ozpin said to the cup.

“Yeah?” Qrow said with a grin that suggested more horizontally engaging activities that he was seriously not up for performing at all but hoped would get a rise anyway. He leaned back and took a casual swig of his own mystery cup, and was met with the horrifying taste of citrus.

“Oh, fuck you,” he snapped, gagging on the orange juice while Oz dropped his bashfulness like a hot potato and side-eyed him with a smirk of his own. “You broke the plastic seal of the apocalypse.”

He bet Taiyang could sense it somehow, wherever he was.

The battle had been lost. And all because his boss was a conniving bastard.

“There were six of them. All with similar expiration dates,” Ozpin said, and he had no right sounding that smug. “I was worried he might start trying to bludgeon you with them next.”

The brilliant retort Qrow swore he had lined up was interrupted by a bout of chills running through his body. He gritted his teeth, riding it out when a thick blanket dropped over his shoulders. He huddled into it instinctively until the wave passed, wrapping it around himself properly when he was more coordinated. What a great blanket.

What a weirdly familiar blanket.

Ah right, it was the one Summer had gotten him to drape over the side of the couch Oz was sitting on because—

Oh.

“There’s a massive bloodstain on your couch,” Ozpin informed him, right on cue. “Dare I ask who it belongs to?”

“Previous owner,” Qrow said.

He didn’t realize how it sounded until Oz stared at him in patient, mildly exasperated askance.

“He was murdered, just not by me,” Qrow admitted, fiddling around with the fringe on the blanket. “The fabric’s thick enough that it didn’t mess with the stuffing or the springs or anything, but the stain wouldn’t come out. I guess not too many people want a couch with a constant reminder that the last guy died on it.” He wrapped the blanket tighter and reclined with a sigh. “Major discount, nobody felt like getting it reupholstered. Worth it, I’d say.”

“That’s certainly one way to look at it,” Ozpin said in a voice loaded with judgement.

This blanket was the greatest idea. “You said yourself it was comfy.”

“That was before I realized it was last in possession of a dead person.”

“You’re in possession of a whole bunch of dead people,” Qrow mumbled, which wasn’t even witty and a little too on the nose.

Qrow felt Ozpin tense next to him, then nearly toppled over as Ozpin leaned forward to take something off the coffee table.

“Why do I get the impression you took all this at once?” Oz said, shifting his weight so an off-kilter Qrow fell into him rather than behind him or off the couch or on the table like a jackass.

Qrow leaned his head on his shoulder for no particular reason except proximity and he was too tired to move, squinting at the half-full bottle of cold medicine. “Didn’t even work right.”

Speaking of, the tickle in his throat was starting to come back.

“Not at that dosage, no.” Ozpin set the bottle back on the table. “So we’ll blame that last comment on the cold medicine, shall we?”

“Sounds good to me,” Qrow said, and tried to stifle a cough. Not only did he fail, but it opened some sort of cough gateway that had him doubled over for a few minutes. Oz passed him the orange juice at the end of it, which Qrow reluctantly drank.

“Shit,” Qrow muttered, and without thinking leaned back into Ozpin instead of against the back of the couch. The arm around his shoulders probably meant Oz didn’t mind, at least. “Bet this isn’t what you signed up for.”

Long, cool fingers ran through his hair and wow, that felt nice, even if the tiny noise he’d just made was one he’d never admit to on his deathbed. Ozpin hummed thoughtfully.

“It’s not ideal, but I would say this is exactly what I signed up for.”

Qrow felt the claustrophobic surge of anxiety he’d managed to fight down while they’d been talking about dumb shit make a comeback.

He tried not to think about what it meant.

-

Oz had swapped out Advent Garden for live footage of the New Year’s festival at some unknowable point in time, and while the celebrators were just as enthusiastic and brightly dressed as the superheroes, they were less violent and explosion-happy, so Qrow found himself starting to drift.

He faded in and out a few times, mostly waking up for another coughing fit rather than anything interesting. A couple times he thought he caught Oz dozing too, but as far as he could tell, he never left his side.

“Hi, Uncle Qrow!”

Qrow started awake with a little more pain but a comparatively clearer head and realized that along with the sudden and inexplicable sound of Ruby, he was also being gently but insistently shaken by Ozpin.

“The television,” Oz said as Qrow blinked at him blearily, and sure enough, there were his nieces, Ruby perched on her dad’s shoulders while Yang jumped up and down in front of them, waving frantically.

“We love you, and we miss you, and we hope you don’t die, and also happy new year!” Ruby chirruped, also waving so frantically Tai needed to keep a death-grip on her legs so she didn’t go flying.

“Yeah!” Yang shouted, and pointed a finger directly at the camera. “And you gotta get better soon, because this is the year I’m coming for your crown in Kombat Kats, old man!”

Qrow scowled at the screen as he felt Ozpin’s chest vibrate with laughter. “Not old, brat.”

Tai just smiled with all of his excessive dad-ness like he was an exhausted but attentive father and not secretly the petty evil mastermind Qrow knew he was.

Between their combined trouble-making genius, Qrow both wondered and didn’t want to know how they’d snagged their five seconds of fame. They’d probably brag about it in the morning, anyway. At least he’d gotten a chance to see it live.

It was starting to get close to midnight, now.

“It looks as though they’re doing better,” Ozpin said, still running fingers absent-mindedly through Qrow’s hair.

“Yeah, lately they have been,” Qrow admitted, and that dissonant, this-doesn’t-fit sensation came rushing back.

This was nice.

This was too nice.

Nice had a cost, one Qrow wasn’t a huge fan of paying, which was why he tried going for the smaller bargains where he could.

A nice life and a purpose that didn’t perpetually flay his conscience had cost him his sister, and maybe he should’ve said good riddance there, but not a day went by where he didn’t wonder if she might’ve made some different choices if she weren’t so set on spiting him. After a lifetime of having each other’s backs he could almost believe her when she said she hadn’t left him so much as he’d driven her away.

He’d always known a nice family would cost him, but after Yang he’d thought Raven was the cost for that one too, and then after Ruby he figured it’d just be time, either when he finally went down in the field or when Tai and Summer finally realized that between his Semblance and his background and his general life choices he shouldn’t have had a place in their vulnerable, easily influenced daughters’ lives. But instead the cost had been Summer, and that was—

That wasn’t the kind of price he knew how to pay again.

And the funny thing was, Qrow had always kinda thought Ozpin got that—that their little arrangement was just an information exchange and a fluid exchange that benefited them both. Because bargaining was what Ozpin did—and diplomacy, and nudging his pieces on the chessboard into whatever positions would get him the best outcome. He put on a great act of kindness and serenity and understanding with the benevolent headmaster routine, but that just meant he knew how to be a good figurehead, and why wouldn’t he? That eternity thing he had going on gave him a lot of experience with being personable, but also put him on a level pretty much untouchable except where other legends were concerned. Qrow was transient enough in normal people’s lives, he was probably dust on the wind to someone millennia old. At least it’d be fun while it lasted.

(But that didn’t stop him from hoarding away the small talks, the way the mask dropped when enough buttons got pushed, the heart-stopping genuine smiles, the inane little interests and quirks that bled out, the quiet moments in the afterglow—)

And if this wasn’t just nice, then it was something else.

Had to be.

Qrow’s throat clicked as he swallowed. “I don’t have anything else I can give you, y’know,” he said quietly, and the hand in his hair stilled.

“What?” Ozpin asked, and there was something strange in his voice.

It was pretty telling that whatever it was wasn’t confusion.

Qrow tried shifting away, which wasn’t going so well after staying plastered at Oz’s side for hours. “Whatever this is, whatever you want with this—domestic playacting weird shit, I mean yeah, it feels good and I appreciate it if that’s what you want me to say, but it’s not gonna get you anything extra from me.” He stared at nothing in particular on his table and smiled humorlessly. “You already maxed me out, alright? Hate to break it to you, but even if you butter me up, I don’t get any more sober, or better at playing with others, or better at my goddamn job. I haven’t been holding out on you. That’s all I got.”

He managed to untangle himself a little more, but mostly because now Oz was also withdrawing away from him.

Ozpin stayed silent.

Qrow raked a hand through his hair and realized his jaw hurt from clenching it so hard, and wasn’t that just another way his body had decided to fail him that day. “I—I guess I could give you more time? I could get out in the field more if you people would stop putting me under house arrest, and Signal’s a nice cover job but I can drop that and try to sync up scouting with more excuse away missions.”

He took a deep, shuddering breath that was a huge mistake because it just started him off coughing again, and coughing just reminded him that his psychedelic syrup drug had worn off during naptime and everything hurt, and he hated this conversation and this day and this cold and frankly everything actually, fuck everything overall.

A noise maker went off on the television, courtesy of yet another happy family, and a horrible thought occurred to him. “Look, I—time I can do, if it’s a favor I don’t know why you wouldn’t just ask, if you want me to put out more, hey, you’re the one with the schedule we gotta work around and you might want to wait until I’m less disgusting, but if this has anything to do with the girls somehow, with Ruby’s eyes or trying to use Yang as leverage to get something out of Raven, then once you’re steppin’ over my corpse you’ll have Taiyang to deal with, and there’s a guy that’s already lost too much—”

“Stop,” Ozpin said in a voice so strangled Qrow could barely tell it was him, and suddenly Qrow was alone on the couch. “I’ll go. Before your _debt_ grows any higher.”

Qrow wasn’t sure what pissed him off most—the way Oz spat the word debt like there was a point Qrow was missing, the way he was just turning tail and leaving, or that he still hadn’t bothered to give a goddamn explanation—but whatever it was had him reaching out to snag a gaudy snowflake-covered sleeve. Somehow his wimpy grip was still enough to get Ozpin to turn and—

Oh.

_Oh._

The mask had dropped, and Qrow wasn’t sure he’d ever seen that so completely before. Flashes, sure, of irritation, exhaustion, concern, maybe even a little extra affection—but it all evened back out into that superficial quiet amusement too quick to really appreciate it. This was—well, he looked devastated, actually.

Pained.

Human.

And as Qrow felt his breath catch in his throat a really perverse part of him thrilled at it, filing it away in a place of honor in his collection. Because he’d done that—he’d meant enough, had managed to dig deep enough into the chinks in Ozpin’s armor that the mask was gone because of him.

So great, he was a horrible enough person to emotionally wreck an immortal, there was something to put on the resume he might need soon.

His hand dropped back to his lap and so did his gaze, watching himself twist the blanket into knots. An army of apologies set out to find its way to his mouth, was besieged by his sore throat on the upward climb, and died there.

“Wait,” he croaked out instead, and somehow that was still enough to make Oz pause, sitting back down on the coffee table instead so he could face Qrow.

“Do you want this to be just a bargain?” Ozpin asked quietly. The mask was rebuilding itself, hurt sliding back behind patient dark eyes, but it was slow going.

Of course they fucking had to do this now.

“Just tryin’ to call it what it is,” Qrow said, and had the dubious honor of watching Oz’s barely reconstructed emotional wall collapse again. “I know what you are, Oz. Kinda. But it makes you a long-term, big picture kinda guy, and I’m neither of these things. Don’t pretend there’s a way I fit into this beyond temporary entertainment.”

There, at least it was out there now.

Ozpin’s eyes swept his face, still hurting but thoughtful. “You know what I am,” he repeated slowly. “You know the mantle of leadership is one I’ve held over countless lifetimes due to that very quality. Because by nature I possess a level of knowledge wisdom, experience, and consistency unique to someone with my—talents. Those aware of my abilities expect sound judgment and a solid course of action, and those who are not still expect a competent leader. I put a great deal of time and effort into attempting to meet those expectations.”

He sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose. “So why, then, do you think I chose to take up with the one person who’s made it his life’s mission to reduce me back to whatever base emotions he favors that day?”

‘Take up with.’ Qrow fought not to roll his eyes. Just say ‘fuck’, Oz.

“Because I’m easy, available, and great at it?” he drawled.

“No,” Ozpin said, flat and matter-of-fact.

Qrow gaped at him, offended. “So are you saying I’m not gr—”

“I’m saying,” Oz said in his annoyed, we’re-getting-off-track-here voice, “that for all I probably shouldn’t, I appreciate that you’re fine with something—less.”

And Qrow’s headache was back. Again. “What.”

“What I am,” Ozpin trailed off uncertainly, like his brain had gotten so convoluted even he couldn’t understand it anymore. “I wasn’t always—” He stopped again.

Time kept ticking closer to midnight. It wasn’t like Qrow had anywhere to be.

Ozpin took a deep breath, eyes distant and troubled. “The inheritance process is often described as having two souls,” he said. “It’s more of a transitional phase that loses its distinguishment as time goes on, but while I’m partially that eternal soul you imagine thinks so little of you, I am—I was, also in part a much—lesser soul.” He smiled wryly. “One that seems so much smaller for the millennia it was burdened with shouldering. As you deduced, one lifetime seems short enough with that much time behind you, and that brief frame of individuality even shorter. I know what I am I must be, and it’s not something I regret, but sometimes that life gets—lost.”

There was a pressure in Qrow’s chest that had nothing to do with a virus.

Oz had said he’d had a sister, hadn’t he?

Oz was looking at him now, really looking, and there was something terrifyingly intimate in his gaze. “And yet, somehow, you thought to go looking.”

Ozpin wanted a reaction. What—

Qrow was all out of reactions.

Reaction time ran out and there was a shock of warmth as Ozpin took his hand, shoulders braced for rejection. “You’re right, this wasn’t part of anything long term. This was just something I wanted.” He looked exhausted. “ _Me_. For as long as this life will last me.” He pressed their palms together. “And I had hoped it was something you wanted, too.”

He did.

The answer was there, it was right fucking there, and Qrow didn’t know how to say it—

Qrow stared at their entwined hands. “I literally cause misery, you remember that, right?”

The corner of Ozpin’s mouth lifted in a slight smile. “Only occasionally on purpose and it frequently helps me stay in the now,” he replied, and his voice had evened back out into its usual, vaguely amused lilt.

“Sounds like you haven’t been given a reminder lately,” Qrow said wryly. “Don’t worry, clock’s running, it’ll happen eventually.”

Oz’s smile got a little more amused and a lot more indulgent. “I know you’re sick, but I’m a little worried about your observational skills right now.”

Shit, what did he miss?

“What—” he asked in panic, but Ozpin’s thumb stroked the back of his hand soothingly.

“If you haven’t noticed, then it’s nothing you should be worrying about.”

Easier said than done.

Why did Oz want this, again?

A whole mess of emotions balled up and settled in Qrow’s stomach, and oh hey, hadn’t he been nauseous earlier today, wasn’t it great to have that feeling back. He leaned back on the couch and clamped his free hand over his mouth, swallowing bile. Somehow he managed not to let go of Ozpin’s hand in the process.

“Sure picked a great time to let a guy know you’re interested,” he muttered after the wave had passed.

“Yes, however could you have known?” Ozpin said with sarcasm so heavy Qrow squeezed his hand to make sure he hadn’t somehow been replaced with an evil clone while Qrow was fighting his stomach.

The sarcasm didn’t track. But that level of exasperation definitely did.

“What?” Qrow asked after grudgingly accepting that he was still the real deal.

“Well,” Ozpin said, still dry as dust, “somehow I thought sleeping with you repeatedly might serve as a hint, but I see now I was mistaken.”

Right, because it’s not like that was something Qrow had a habit of doing anyway, it wasn’t one of his key defining traits or anything, in fact he’d really thought his reputation was one of the reasons Oz had picked him in the first place—

Which they’d already covered, God, he was spiralling into circles now. With himself.

Then again, it’d been the High King of Exposition who’d chosen to suddenly become a man of action instead of actually expressing any of this sooner.

“That’s ‘cause I’m used to you spelling things the fuck out before you do them,” Qrow said incredulously. “Including me. So if we have sex and you don’t qualify it, I’m gonna assume you just wanna have sex.” He gestured to the table. “Speaking of, thanks for making me doubt reality by showing up here out of the blue and not explaining why until now, that’s really something I needed today.”

Ozpin bowed his head and pressed his free palm to his forehead, mouth set in a frown Qrow was intimately familiar with. “Again, for some reason I thought you might find my atypical spontaneity—”

“Romantic,” Qrow finished, “yeah, you said,” and honestly Qrow was sick of listening to himself screw this up already but he wasn’t sure how to stop.

He needed a reason to stop talking.

“And clearly you disagree,” Oz said, and behind him something changed dramatically enough on the television that Qrow’s eyes refocused on it even as his ears stayed trained on Ozpin. “So if my miscommunication is a heavy enough crime to negate the very personal reasoning behind it, then—”

Qrow almost never got timing right. Went part and parcel with his Semblance.

Once in a blue moon it managed to work out, though—he had nightmares about what would’ve happened if he hadn’t timed things right when Yang had run off hunting for her mother—and so he’d just happened to catch a look at the television as the countdown hit midnight, dragged Oz forward by their still-joined hands and kissed him hard.

Oz went with it. In fact he more than went with it; there was a hand in Qrow’s hair and a weight in his lap and alright, yeah, that was definitely some tongue, nice, and midnight came and went and Qrow really wished he had the energy to take things a step further but as it was he ended up being the one to break it off so he could breathe.

“Good thing it’s a new year,” he murmured against Ozpin’s lips. “Looks like we both got a lot of changes to make.”

Then reality reasserted itself along with all of his symptoms and he stared at Ozpin in mute horror. “Wait, shit, that was a terrible idea.”

Oz blinked owlishly before seeming to remember himself, sliding off Qrow’s lap to sit back on the table. “Yes, well, at least now we can safely say it was stupidity that caused it rather than any extenuating circumstances,” he said, looking less bothered than he probably should have.

“Mm,” Qrow agreed, and suddenly realized that the swooping, sinking feeling in his stomach hadn’t just been emotional. “Don’t take this the wrong way, it’s not related, but I’ll be right back.”

There was no way he’d eaten that much soup.

And it had tasted a lot better going down.

Ozpin had gotten rid of the takeout, turned off the television, folded the blanket, and refreshed various beverage cups with things Qrow hated drinking by the time he dragged himself back. He passed Qrow some water, eyes soft with concern.

God, there was something Qrow hoped he’d be seeing more in the near future. But maybe not specifically concern.

And really not in this context.

“This is your future,” he rasped out once the water had gotten his vocal cords working again.

Oz rolled his eyes, and that was a new one, too, Oz was officially doing better at this New Year’s resolution thing than Qrow. “Yes, thank you for that.”

“That’s what happens when you wait to confess ‘til I’m horribly diseased,” Qrow said, collapsing back on the couch.

Ozpin coughed self-consciously. Unless he was already getting sick, but that seemed a little fast. “That may have been deliberate.”

Qrow managed to lift his head just long enough to stare at him. “Why?” he asked slowly.

Shifty-eyed. Ominous, but also new. “Well, I wasn’t aiming for sick, specifically, although that was certainly one of the less alarming scenarios, it was more a matter of waiting for a moment when you were...less than able-bodied...to clarify our relationship. As that would reduce the risk of the conversation getting—derailed.”

Qrow smirked, but mostly at the couch cushions. His energy level was crashing again, but this conversation was too good to pass up. “Why, do you find me derailing?”

There was a deep sigh. “Qrow, whatever tasteless pun you’re hoping to set up seems like one Taiyang would love using, so if you happen to finish the delivery I will make sure it finds its way to him.”

Dick move, Oz.

“Kinda creepy to skip straight to the scenario where I can’t put up a fuss,” Qrow said instead. “Maybe it would’ve been fine if you’d brought it up on simple Sunday, how do you know? It’s not like you tried it out first.”

Ozpin went strangely, suspiciously quiet.

“Oz,” Qrow said, a grin spreading across his face as he mentally raced through any possible weirdness in their last few meetings, “how many times have you tried doing this before?”

“I don’t want to tell you,” Ozpin said petulantly.

“That many, huh?”

Something warm was unspooling in Qrow’s chest, something that still kept running up against that hard wall of too-good-to-be-true panic that had been pretty much ingrained into him, but it had a name now, and Oz thought it would work out, and if Oz thought it would work out then of course it would.

Yeah. They had this.

-

Time skipped again, and he shifted on the couch to see that his coffee table had been completely cleared and Ozpin was seated nearby in a chair he’d brought in from the kitchen, pouring over his scroll.

Oz looked up at the sound. “Glynda says happy new year,” he said, and Qrow seriously doubted that was what he’d been engrossed in.

“Not to me, she didn’t.”

“No,” Ozpin admitted.

That did remind Qrow that he hadn’t checked his scroll recently, and he dug it out of his pocket to find that the usual suspects had texted him a happy new year and his scroll was minutes from death. He sent back a quick “you too not dead” before tossing it on the coffee table to become his future self’s problem.

“Why’re you sitting there?” he asked, and Ozpin looked up from his scroll again.

“I plan on leaving before your family stops by,” he said, and yeah, that was a good idea, Qrow didn’t have a way of explaining this to them just yet. “But I was hoping you’d wake beforehand so I could say goodbye.”

“Appreciate it,” Qrow said, stretching, “but I meant why are you over there instead of over here?”

Oz looked from Qrow to his scroll to the chair and back again and shrugged. “You needed some proper rest. It wasn’t nearly as comfortable with two.”

“Maybe not sitting, but if we tried it horizontally—”

“One of us would fall off,” Ozpin said with a level of confidence Qrow both did and didn’t want context for. “This is as good a time as any to make the move to your bed, though.”

Ah, crap. If Oz had thought the couch was bad…

Even Tai thought the bed was bad. And he should’ve been immune to Qrow’s lifestyle by now.

“No, out here’s good,” Qrow said quickly, grabbing Ozpin’s hand again as he shot a bewildered stare in the direction of Qrow’s bedroom.

“Qrow, what—”

“It’s not fit for use, that’s what’s important here,” Qrow said, and Ozpin’s expression was screaming for an explanation. “I’ll let you know another day. Baby steps, Oz.”

Qrow watched Ozpin battle his natural inclination to be the nosiest person on Remnant before nodding and letting it go. “This couch situation might take some working out, then.”

Which was how Qrow ended up lying on the couch with his head cushioned in Oz’s lap.

“You’ll let me know if this isn’t comfortable,” Ozpin said once they’d settled in, and it didn’t sound like a request.

Pshh. Just because he was even more of a stork-person than Qrow didn’t mean he wasn’t comfortable.

“M’fine,” said Qrow. “You’re the one not getting any sleep like that.”

“I’m not tired,” Ozpin said, which had all the tonal earmarks of a lie.

His scroll was out again.

Qrow put two and two together and said goodbye to his lap pillow. “Don’t humor me if something’s going on, just get going. Not like I’m the most exciting guy to be around right now anyway.”

Oz placed a hand back in his hair. “No, it’s fine, Glynda has it handled. She just wanted some input on what to do next regarding the situation in Mistral. I agreed to stay on standby if she needs to clear anything else with me.”

Good old Glynda. Couldn’t get more by-the-book. Whatever hookups she and Ironwood had managed to muddle their way through probably involved long, passionate recitations of procedural codes and regulations.

Which Jimmy wasn’t even that big on unless he was throwing it in someone else’s face. No wonder they were having problems.

“You gotta get her out of the field, Oz. Carmine’s looking to retire anyway and Glyn was made for the admin life.”

Ozpin tapped him gently on the forehead. “Then maybe my other scout should work harder on recovering.”

“Oh, so that’s why you’re taking care of me,” Qrow said with mock revelation. “The truth finally comes out.” He jabbed a finger at one of Ozpin’s sweater sleeves. “Get me up and running by Carmine’s retirement and you’ll never have to do paperwork again. Shrewd.”

“I do try to think of all the angles,” Ozpin replied flippantly, seizing the accusatory hand and entwining their fingers again. “Get some rest. I’m not going anywhere for the time being.”

It wasn’t much of a challenge to obey that order; sleep started dragging Qrow back down almost immediately after each time he woke. “‘Night, Oz,” he mumbled.

“Good night, Qrow.”

Qrow could’ve left it there.

But he felt like he could do better; keep rolling with the weirdness that had dominated the last few hours, and fuck it, it was New Year’s and Oz had already brought his A-game, so he dredged up all of his willpower and delirium and added a quick, quiet, “Love you,” to his sendoff.

He heard Ozpin’s voice catch.

“I think,” Ozpin said, careful and a little bit wistful, “I will wait to accept that from a slightly more cognizant version of yourself.”

Qrow snickered. “Don’t hold your breath, that guy’s an emotionally repressed asshole.”

“But so very worth the wait.” Long fingers began stroking his hair again. “For what it’s worth, I love you, too.”

Now there were some words to pass out to.

-

Ozpin kissed him goodbye in the morning about half an hour before Qrow was ambushed by two energetic pre-teens and a fashion-challenged blond, who dragged him off to some quack who told Qrow to take even more drugs. And then the Rose-Xiao Long family put him in quarantine back at their place in Patch to make sure he took said drugs.

Because a mostly emotionally recovered Taiyang Xiao Long’s idea of familial attentiveness was aggressive and terrifying.

But at least it meant Qrow was well enough to return the favor when Ozpin got sick two weeks later.


End file.
